Aerial photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau taken by Allied planes on August 25, 1944, during a reconnaissance mission. Decades after World War II, this and other images taken that day were rediscovered in American records. The English language labels were added in the 1970s.
This image shows two of the gas chamber and crematorium complexes at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. Specifically, it shows crematorium II and crematorium III, both of which had underground gas chambers and above ground crematoria. The Nazis started murdering Jewish people in these gas chambers in 1943. They dismantled and demolished them in the winter of 1944–1945.
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